Now let’s go back to your Plan. With the site up and running, it is time to customize it using your plan as a guide. Our Client Success team will walk you through each step of customization as part of your onboarding process. The onboarding phase that each segment is related to is listed beneath the title of the sections in italics so you can anticipate when we’ll be discussing each topic.
Reviewed in Onboarding: Data Decisions and Delivery Meeting
A significant feature of the platform is the ability to collect and maintain data about your members. Using the 360Alumni platform is an opportunity to think expansively about what would be useful, beyond what you may have been able to do until now. Consider that you want to maximize networking potential between your users, support affinity group identification, and target communications. Refer to the User Profile Fields and User Profile Sections of your community space general settings for reference.
Association Fields
The association field(s) should capture the characteristic by which the member/alumni primarily identifies with their organization. Association fields are set up at the beginning as a defining characteristic of the member. For higher education this is often the degree and/or focus, i.e. Bachelor of Science, Finance. For private schools, non profits, and other organizations this may be program type, school attended, member type, or something else. We will discuss this in the Data Decision onboarding meeting.
KB Article: https://www.360alumni.com/support/association-fields
Additional Fields:
Enabling the optional fields, adding custom fields, and using tags are three areas to configure in advance to collect the data identified in the Plan. Consider profile fields related to affinity identifiers - these could be clubs, class year, major, address etc. When you have your list of information to collect and what fields are needed for that, there are different ways to set-up the platform. For example, institution related clubs or activities can be identified via custom fields or Tags. Other associations or leadership positions can be created using custom fields.
Tags are particularly helpful for other interests, hobbies, career interests, and new ideas.
The bottom line:
Consider the relevant information that defines your membership (for alumni as students and now) and have corresponding fields in their directory profile.
To begin, contact Information (email, phone, address) and employment history are automatically included. In addition, there are six areas of information that are commonly requested that can be turned-on if they are relevant to your community. These optional standard fields are shown here:
Optional Standard Fields: KB article at https://www.360alumni.com/support/optional-standard-fields
Custom Profile Fields
If you need additional information such as gender or leadership roles, you can create Custom Profile Fields in a variety of formats as shown here:
KB article at www.360alumni.com/support/custom-profile-fields
Tags
Tags are an open format that encourages members to choose the tags that apply. You can have as many tags as you like.
KB article at www.360alumni.com/support/adding-uploading-tags
Order of Appearance
You can also set the order in which the Profile Field sections appear on the screen in the User Profile Sections tab.
Once you decide the preferred format to collect information such as using a custom field for gender and tags for extracurriculars, you can follow the Knowledge Base articles to implement it. We are happy to discuss the options at any time.
Reviewed in Onboarding: Admin Training Meeting
Locate custom welcome messages in the General tab of your community site settings. Creating your own welcome messages for the Sign up page, Login page, and welcome message provides a consistent voice for your members. For a closed community, there is also the “account under review” message. You can leave the default messages for some or all of them if you choose. Refer to suggested Welcome Messages in this KB article: https://www.360alumni.com/support/create-a-custom-message
Reviewed in Onboarding: Admin Training Meeting
Editable from the Homepage tab of your general settings - the frontpage of the platform is the information hub for your members. The more content provided, the more valuable it is and will keep members coming back to learn the latest news. The optional units are a customizable widget (this is the map stock photo you see when you first view the homepage), social media links, Headlines, and the RSS feed.
We recommend activating and customizing all the options available for sharing information on the homepage.
Note - you must have the credentials for your organization's Facebook and Instagram accounts in order to hook the feeds to the homepage. If you do not have these, you will need to work directly with an individual that does.
To update the homepage widget go to General Settings and the Homepage tab. Under the homepage map section, you’ll see an option to use either the generic map version or to customize the widget. Select customize and a pop-out window will appear to allow you to enter text and to upload an image. Make sure the text is formatted and sized correctly and include a few live links to areas in the platform!
Here is an example of a homepage with all optional features turned on and populated with fresh and interesting content -
KB article at www.360alumni.com/support/add-social-networks
KB article at www.360alumni.com/support/create-headline-news
Reviewed in Onboarding: Admin Training Meeting
The platform has optional features that Admin can activate at any time from either the Settings drop-down or General Settings.
Jobs or Opportunities
Because so many organizations want to share volunteer needs, grant information, and other jobs and opportunities with the membership, you can choose to label this page Jobs or Opportunities. You can enable or disable this feature as well as edit the label and types of jobs displayed, from the General tab under General Settings. If you are not using this feature initially, you should turn off the page until you are ready to use it.
Mentorship
Mentorship is an optional section that needs to be formatted with a welcome message and questions when you begin to use it. It can also be disabled until you are ready to manage a program. To edit the mentorship feature or turn it off or on, locate it in the drop-down under the gear icon, about a quarter of the way down.
KB article at www.360alumni.com/support/create-mentor
Fundraising
Like Jobs/Opportunities, this functionality can be enabled or disabled at any time. It is a valuable option for the organization however if you are not fundraising or will not be using the platform for fundraising, disable it for now. Like jobs, you can enable or disable this feature from General Settings under the General Tab.
Resources
Take advantage of the opportunity to provide links to your institutional web pages and other places of interest under the tab. You can also put links in the Footer. Links can be edited in General Settings under the General Tab and in the options on the left-hand side.
Sponsors
Sponsors is an extremely flexible feature of the platform that allows you to highlight businesses, opportunities, member/alumni success stories, or anything else that you would like. If you enable the feature, you would label it to reflect its use such as “Member Businesses” or “Volunteer Opportunities” or “School Spirit Items.” It can be enabled at any time from the General tab of General Settings.
KB article at www.360alumni.com/support/add-manage-sponsors
Reviewed in Onboarding: Data Decisions and Delivery Meeting
Default Notifications and Privacy settings are managed from the General Settings section under Privacy and Notifications. With Notifications, your users will receive emails of activities within the platform that are relevant to their personal preferences. For example, users can receive weekly digests of posts made within the Mentor feature, activity with the Groups they belong to, new jobs that are posted based on their parameters, local and new events, and more.
Administrators can receive additional notifications based on activities - new and activated accounts, newly created events and campaigns, new groups and donations submitted. Refer to the Notifications and Privacy Section on your Setup Checklist worksheet.
For Privacy, you will set the default options for which fields are visible to members from another member’s profile such as email, phone number, and address.
Please keep in mind that once a member activates their profile, they have the power to change both information visibility on their platform and notification settings.
KB article at https://www.360alumni.com/support/privacy-notifications
360Alumni includes embedded analytics. In addition, Google Analytics is a powerful tool for understanding the behaviors of your membership so we recommend using it from the beginning.
Check with your IT area to see if your organization already uses Google Analytics in which case the platform would be an additional property for the existing account. To implement Google Analytics, you need to enter the UA code. Refer to the Analytics section on your Setup Checklist worksheet.
KB article at https://www.360alumni.com/support/connecting-google-analytics
Reviewed in Onboarding: Admin Training Meeting
Refer to the Additional Administrators section on your New Client Form 1: Set Up Questions
Administrators
There can be as many Administrators for the platform as you would like and they can be added or deleted at any time. Consider who should be included from the beginning.
KB article at www.360alumni.com/support/administrator-privileges
Email (Emma) Users
Reviewed in Onboarding: Admin Training Meeting
There can be as many Emma Users as you would like. Users can be added anytime by 360Alumni. Consider who should be included from the beginning and send us a list of the names and emails.
Before you begin using your Emma account you will need to fill out all general information in Emma and insert the information required for ensuring deliverability and ensuring that your domain is authentic. This will require that you collaborate with your webmaster and IT team.
Follow our DKIM set up steps here: https://www.360alumni.com/support/email-authentication
Action Items:
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